Slamming Spam: A Guide for System Administrators

Designing an Anti-Spam Architecture

Designing a solution to the problem of spam for an organization is a complicated task. Many design parameters are similar, if not identical, to designing an email infrastructure itself. Because this is not a book on designing email systems in general, we focus on the area of spam.

Often, the first step in a design process is to gather data. Once the appropriate data has been gathered, a policy can be developed around how the organization should deal with the problem of spam. This policy can be as simple or as complex as needed.

After an anti-spam policy is defined, the next step is to plan and implement it. When implemented, statistics such as identified spam, false positive rates, and other data can be calculated ...